Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage

BOOK REVIEWS of each writer, there is little clear sense of why these three were chosen (because despite their similarities in race, nationality, and education, each held different views). The circular web fights linear critical language . While each writer is being placed in context with the topic at hand, the reader loses the overall sense of Scott's argument. The figure of the web in the scaffolding, while presenting a new critical approach, also demands a new approach to writing. Likewise, Scott assumes the reader's familiarity with many of the major texts she discusses: perhaps an assumption warranted more with Woolfs novels than with the more often overlooked West's 1,179-page Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Refiguring Modernism sets itself against traditional critical interpretations of modernism. Opening up modernism, for Scott, occurs with a study of women modernists as well as with a comparatist critical method, one that considers the various artists of modernism in diverse and sometimes dissonant dialogue. Scott focuses not on the individual writer alone, but also on the struggles of relationship with others, with history, and with the cultural environment of literary production. Refiguring Modernism presents one way of seeing literary production as a social, historical, and yet intensely personal endeavor. Christine Bûcher State University of New York at Binghamton Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage Janet Fouli. Structure and Identity: The Creative Imagination in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage. Série: Lettres. Volume: xxvi. Tunis: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de la Manouba, 1995. 263 pp. Paper 15-18 dinars. JANET FOULI'S STUDY of Dorothy Richardson's thirteen-volume sequence novel explores the aesthetic contribution and explicates the complexities of Pilgrimage. Designed for a general audience of undergraduates and first-time readers of Richardson, Structure and Identity does not so much argue an interpretive thesis as it creates order out of this unwieldy landmark text of modernism and initiates readers into an understanding and appreciation oÃ- Pilgrimage. The first section of the book discusses the progress of Richardson's protagonist, Miriam Henderson, as "pilgrim," "woman," and "writer." Section two examines "people," "time," and "place" in "Miriam's World." A third section, "The Language of Pilgrimage," is followed by a brief conclusion. This organization by subject impedes development of a coherent, unified argument. Many valuable perceptions, wedged be225 ELT 40:2 1997 tween huge chunks of often unanalyzed quotation from Pilgrimage, are squandered, their significance overwhelmed by the amount of primary text included. Admittedly, the sheer magnitude oÃ- Pilgrimage makes a tightly argued analytical study a challenge—and any thesis about it will be reductive—but one would still like to see a more sustained argument presented. The book's introduction identifies its purpose, "to evaluate the aesthetic quality oÃ- Pilgrimage" and the preface presents the book's purported argument: "Dorothy Richardson took the Christian concept of the trinity, and used it as a metaphor for the work of art." The subsequent discussion, however, provides more evidence of Fouli's use of this metaphor than of Richardson's. The religious motif is primarily pursued in chapter one of section one, "Miriam as Pilgrim," and Fouli's division of sections one and two each into three parts ostensibly corresponds to the trinity. Yet except for scattered references, the untenable trinity argument is dropped after the first chapter only to surface again in the book's brief conclusion. In light of the author's own statements, one is surprised to arrive at the conclusion and read that the "purpose of this study has been to show some of the ways in which Dorothy Richardson transformed autobiography into fiction." Despite the conceptual confusion of the book, Fouli proves a sensitive reader oÃ- Pilgrimage, and the parts of her study—the details of analysis —are more impressive than the whole. She has carefully researched relevant primary sources; this is no easy task in the absence of a complete, authoritative edition of Richardson's writing and requires locating many reviews, stories, and articles Richardson published in small periodicals as well as travel to special collections. The most extensive and detailed analysis of text occurs in "The Language of Pilgrimage"; an argumentative organization might have used this close reading...